2013 Shou Mei White Tea from Yunnan Sourcing

Hello hello!

Around a month ago, I was fortunate enough to meet Scott and his wife of Yunnan Sourcing! Besides drinking a lot of tea together, we filmed two youtube videos as well! One of those videos was of Scott and I drinking a 2013 Shou Mei white tea. This white tea is a tea that has been aged for over five years, and is a tea that will be released in a 100g beeng for around $10.00 USD. Since the tea has yet to be released (as I only have a small sample that was gifted to me rom Scott), what can we expect whenever it is released? Here’s all you need to know!

Dimensions - 4.7g of tea for a 70ml vessel

Beeng Price - 100g for around $10.00 (estimated)

Water Temperature - boil

Number of Steeps - 12

Steeps 1 - 6

Right off the bat, this 2013 Shou Mei gave off light tasting notes of sweet sugarcane and honey. After another few steeps, the tasting notes became more and more woodsy. With the caramel-like sweetness, it heavily resembled a rum barrel. By the fifth and sixth infusion, this tea’s texture thickened like a beef broth, and started to heavily resemble a roasted GABA oolong.

Steeps 7 - 12

By the middle of the session, this tea began to lose its gentle sweetness as its texture became thicker and woodsier. It still lightly resembled a rum barrel, but still left a broth like texture in the back of the throat. However, towards the end of the session, I started to feel a head-rush of energy that came from this tea. This head-rush made me feel a bit tea drunk, as its energy made me break out in a sweat. However, by the twelfth infusion, this tea was finished and it was time to be put away…

Conclusion

Yunnan Sourcing is about to release a 2013 Shou Mei white tea, and while the tea is not out yet, Scott and I were able to film a youtube video of us drinking it together! First off, one thing I liked about this tea was its wide array of tasting notes. The tasting notes of a rum barrel pleasantly surprised me, and it also held a sweetness the came from within the rum barrel tasting notes. Another aspect about this tea that I like is the fact that it’s affordable. Although it’s not out yet, Scott did speculate that this tea will be around $10.00 upon its release. However, despite that it’ll only be around $10.00, this was a very easy tea to drink and could potentially be a gate-way white tea to get others interested in aged whites.

In conclusion, this tea is affordable and will certainly warrant a purchase from me. So while I had this tea originally with Scott of Yunnan Sourcing, when I had this tea again (for this review) I was reminded of the hospitality that I was shown when I paid my visit to Scott and his wife.…

Below is the Youtube video I got to appear in with Scott!